Your Hadoop Installation isn't Secure - Get a VPN for Better Safety and Security

The second week of January 2017 witnessed multiple attacks on HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) cluster installations on a global scale. Following the attack, there was an unexplained surge in the traffic from a particular IP address 125.64.94.201, with alleged origins from China towards Port 50070 linked HDFS.

The incident of Hadoop attacks came soon after the assault on Apache Couch DB, ElasticSearch, and MongoDB. Of the cases reported, a noticeable pattern was that some attacks were outright acts of ransom, important information was wiped from the system and held for a ransom. There were also other mischief makers who wiped out all data on a whim without any demands for a payment.

Hackers targeting Hadoop exhibit the main motive of data destruction. A report in Computer Business Review read that an attacker left a naming card in a single directory named “NODATA4U_SECUREYOURSHIT”. If not for the total wipe out of all the data, this note would have been slightly amusing. The attackers show traits of vandalism with the main agenda of creating disorder for no better reason than ‘Can do, will do’ attitude.

Hadoop attacks statistics and its reason for increased vulnerability

The beginning of 2016 recorded over 1,000 Hadoop attacks which can be considered as the representative sample of the total Internet-connected installation of Hadoop all over the world. The vulnerability of Hadoop is mostly because of the convenience it offers for deployment without a tight security. Strengthening the security of Hadoop demands a great effort. The installation design of Hadoop makes it vulnerable to attacks, the process of default installation of HDFS Admin links onto the IP address 0.0.0.0 which is an open gateway for any unauthorized user to conclude any function to a specific cluster of Hadoop (provided that there is a working Internet connection) which includes destruction of snapshots, data nodes, and data volumes.

Secure your data with VPN

Enforcing the basic measures of security will not provide adequate protection from an attack. The only foolproof data security measure is provided by VPN’s. Data encryption offered by VPN makes all stored information and communication over the Internet inaccessible to any third party. There are two approaches to data security, securing the storage and communication channels. VPN offers complete anonymity thereby increases security and privacy.

When it comes to Internet security, VPN is right there on the top.